Manuscripts Burn

MANUSCRIPTS BURN

"Manuscripts don't burn"

- Mikhail Bulgakov

Hi, I'm horror and science fiction author Steve Kozeniewski (pronounced: "causin' ooze key.") Welcome to my blog! You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon. You can e-mail me here, join my mailing list here, or request an e-autograph here. Free on this site you can listen to me recite one of my own short works, "The Thing Under the Bed."

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Friday, November 25, 2016

Chessiecon 2016 or Bust!

Hey, everybody! If you live in the Baltimore, MD, area you should definitely swing by Chessiecon at the North Baltimore Plaza Hotel (2004 Greenspring Dr., Lutherville-Timonium, MD, 21093) sometime this weekend (25-27 November, 2016.) I'll be a guest for the second year in a row, and I have to say that this is one of my absolute favorite cons.

As a guest I will not be manning a vendors table as I often do at cons. However, you'll still be able to see me at one of the eleven panels and appearances I'll be conducting. If you want to buy a book, I will be available after panels and during the group signing Saturday evening. If you're really having trouble finding me, feel free to tweet me and I'll come meet you for signing, buying, bone collecting, whatever. As usual, fellow Red Adept Publishing author Mary Fan will also be a con guest. My finalized panel schedule is as follows. (M) indicates I'll be the moderator.

Friday

Time

Title

Location

3:00 PM

Gadgets in Fiction

Greenspring
1

5:30 PM

The Other Side of Over the Top: Writing Your Turkey Award Entry (M)

Greenspring 1

Saturday

Time

Title

Location

10:00 AM

Literary Agents and Query Letters: What, How, and Why

Greenspring 3-5

11:15 AM

Gruesome Deaths: GRRM vs. GRIMM

Greenspring 1

12:30 PM

Reading: HUNTER OF THE DEAD

Chesapeake 1-2

1:45 PM

Turkey Awards Panel

Greenspring 3-5

4:15 PM

Character Building: Quirks, Hobbies, and Passions

Greenspring 3-5

6:45 PM

Group Signing

Atrium

9:15 PM

What's My Line

Greenspring 1

Sunday

Time

Title

Location

10:00 AM

The Martian: Repopularizing the Robinsonade (M)

Greenspring 2

11:15 AM

Protagonists With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Greenspring 2

Friday

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM"Gadgets in Fiction"

It's easy to get too passionate about your faster-than-light drive or the workings of your hand-held ray gun, but your audience doesn't want a textbook. How do you share your geeky idea without straying into too much? When does over-reliance on gadgetry start to take away from the plot and characterization?

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM"The Other Side of Over the Top: Writing Your Turkey Award Entry"

Previous winners and judges give advice on how to make your bad writing the best kind of bad it can be. The deadline for entries is 9pm, so you still have time to write yours after the panel, or you can start planning for next year!

One of the toughest parts about being a writer is selling your work before it's even published. For those aiming to publish traditionally, the first step after polishing your novel is to query literary agents - the gatekeepers to the major publishers. But just what does an agent do? How do you approach them? And how do you capture the spirit of your book in a few short paragraphs? This panel will discuss the what, how, and why of agents and query letters.

We've all heard the comments and jokes about how many deaths there are in Game of Thrones, but how does George R.R. Martin really stack up against the classics? Are his deaths more numerous or more ghastly than those in the Grimm fairy tales? Which other authors have a similar reputation? Come discuss various creative nasty ways to die in a story!

Moderator: D.H. Aire

Panelists: Steve Kozeniewski, Meg Nicholas, Jay Smith, Martin Wilsey

Location: Greenspring 1

12:30 PM - 01:00 PMReading: Steve Kozeniewski

Stephen will be reading an excerpt from his latest release, Hunter of the Dead, a hardcore horror novel about a young Chinese farmgirl coming to grips with suddenly being the most powerful vampire in the world. Cemetery Dance Magazine said Hunter of the Dead is "At times mesmerizing and breathtaking...a complex tapestry of blood and violence."

Location: Chesapeake 1-2

1:45 PM - 2:45 PM "Turkey Awards Panel"

Writers were asked to send in the best terrible paragraph they could write, as the beginning of the best terrible science fiction novel you (n)ever read. Finalist entries will be presented, and judged with humor and harshness. The panelists will decide who gets this year's dubious prizes!

Characters feel more whole when they're given something that they do outside of the story, such as hobbies, passions, and favorite foods or media. Talk about memorable characters that have jumped off the page. Discuss what details make a character real.

What's so intriguing and enduring about the "marooned on an island (or planet)" story? Why is the rescue of one person so satisfying even at great cost and risk to others?

Moderator: Steve Kozeniewski

Panelists: D.H. Aire, Jessica Moran, Jay Smith, Martin Wilsey

Location: Greenspring 2

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM"Protagonists With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder"

First recognized among soldiers, 'Shell-shock' and 'Battle Fatigue' has become PTSD, and the awareness of it has gone mainstream. Has the SF/F genre kept up with science in this case? This panel examines several stories which feature characters who have some emotional-trauma-causing incident in their background, how the story progresses as the character(s) deal with PTSD (or not), and how that particular viewpoint changes the sympathy factor of the character, and affects the story line itself.